Mountain Wanderer Map and Bookstore

About Me

Owner of Mountain Wanderer Map and Book Store and avid hiker for 40 years. Editor of AMC White Mountain Guide and author or co-author of several other White Mountain guidebooks. Member of AMC Four Thousand Footer Committee and WMNF trail adopter.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

BLUEBERRY MOUNTAIN (BENTON): 8/30/16

I took a morning hike up this nice ledgy peak in the Benton Range via the longer western approach to check the trail configuration after several years of logging. The lower part of the trail is certainly less attractive, but it's still an interesting and rewarding hike.

Parking is on a side road off Page Road, which is itself off of Lime Kiln Road at the western base of the mountain. The distance to the summit on this sign is short by 0.6 mile.

The lower mile is on wide logging roads, with a right turn here at the half-mile mark.

There are several old stone walls along the lower mile and a half.

A drainage dip on the logging road.

Oak woods were thinned out here.

A key turn a mile in, where the trail turns left off the road into the woods at a three-way fork. Look for the yellow blaze.

One of several large clearcuts near the trail, extending up to 2100 ft. There are wooded buffers along the trail of varying widths.

Above the cuts the trail climbs through fine spruce forest.

Ledgy, scrubby terrain typifies the broad crest of Blueberry.

Nice ledgy climbing.

First view back to the west, with fog draping the Connecticut River valley.

Cairn art.

Vermont's Signal Mountain Range on the horizon. All five of the Vermont 4000-footers were also visible.

Black Mountain.

Next to this furrowed boulder an unsigned path climbs a short way to the true summit of Blueberry, where there are restricted views.

Mount Moosilauke over the trees from the summit.

Iron pins and an etched triangle mark this as a survey station of the U.S. Coast Survey in the 1870s.

Heading a little way down the east side of the crest through neat shrubby terrain. Moses Sweetser wrote about Blueberry in his late 1800s guidebook, The White Mountains: A Handbook for Travellers: "For about 1 M. from the summit the mountain is free from trees and is covered with alternate bands of carpet-like moss and granite ledges moderately inclined. The work of ascent and exploration is thus rendered easy and pleasant."